How to order internationally from the San-X Net Shop using Tenso!

First off, the San-X Net Shop is a great way to access Rilakkuma products if you don’t live in Japan. They have hundreds of Rilakkuma items in stock, and they also run a pretty fun blog with additional product photos. They generally don’t stock the store/event exclusives, but they do have cool Net Shop exclusives from time to time (like Mushroom Rilakkuma/Squirrel Korilakkuma), and a ton of housewares. Importantly, items are released on the same day as Japanese Rilakkuma Store releases (stores outside of Japan will generally have a delay).

The San-X Net Shop, operated by emix, does not ship internationally, but they do work closely with Tenso, an international shipping service. You can even see a little Tenso ad at the bottom of the San-X Net Shop home page! There are a few other international forwarding services like it, but I trust Tenso because it is recommended by the San-X Net Shop.

As for cost, in addition to the cost of the plushies/purchases:

San-X will charge a flat 500 yen local shipping fee (~5.53 USD), shipping (with tracking) took ~3 days for me

Your credit card company MAY charge a international service fee (check your credit card policy – some do not add this charge, like travel rewards cards)

In this partnership, Tenso has come out with a short guide (in English) on to how to order from the San-X Net Shop using their service. It’s great and succinct, but I’ll expand on a few points after the jump:

Registration is free and in English (and a few other languages, if you prefer), and relatively straightforward. Sign up with your shipping (your actual mailing address that Tenso will ship to) and payment information (they accept PayPal, VISA, MasterCard, JCB and Amex), and they’ll give you a Japanese address. Save this address because you will need it to sign up for a San-X Net Shop account!

While Tenso has multiple language options, the San-X Net Shop is almost entirely in Japanese, save for a few headings. Thus, if you cannot read Japanese like me, I highly recommend using Google Chrome, which gives you an option to translate entire pages. Alternatively, Rikaichan for Firefox has helped me too. Even more alternatively, you can copy+paste everything into Google’s online translator, but that’s a bit tedious.

Registration at the Net Shop should look something like this – click on the images to expand:

Using Google translate, some of these are self-evident, but field by field:

Basic Information

Username, 4-15 alphanumeric characters

Password, 4-15 alphanumeric characters

Confirm password, 4-15 alphanumeric characters

Last name for the first field, then first name (I just typed these next 2 fields in English because I wanted to be consistent with my Tenso account)

Last name for the first field, then first name

Postcode: 120-0023

Prefecture: select 東京都 / Tokyo (if you are using a translator)

Address 1: 足立区 千住曙町４２－４

Address 2: ＴＳ [***YOUR TENSO # HERE****] 通販商品配送サービス ＴＥＮＳＯ 取次ぎ

Phone number: 03-5739-3341

Email address

Email address verification

Mobile phone email address (optional) – I left it blank

Questionnaire (optional)

Gender

DOB: year, month, day

If this gets too confusing, try using this Tenso guide for inputting the shipping address.

Once this is all confirmed, log in at the San-X Net Shop, and you can begin shopping!

San-X Net Shop home page: Clicking on either of the links I’ve highlighted in the yellow boxes will take you to a login page (or your account page, if you are already logged in) – or click here.

3. Shop & Order from the San-X Net Shop!

Even though the Net Shop is in Japanese, ordering is surprisingly pretty straightforward – if you’ve shopped online before, the process is the same and the buttons are all about where you’d expect them to be; I’ve just provided a few screenshots for clarity. For convenience, click here to go straight to the Rilakkuma items hahaha.

Each item page has a small grid like this which lists information on size, stock, and quantity by column. Click on the brown button on the right with the shopping cart to add it to your cart.

From there, after checking over your order at the top, just scroll on down to this section. As an international customer, you should select the Credit Card option (left-most). The next field is for preferred delivery time, but you can just select the second option (no preference – the option I’ve shown in this screencap). Skip the next chunk of fields (those are if you’re shipping to a different address than the one you signed up with), and click the brown button at the bottom to proceed.

The next few screens are where you put in your credit card information. You should check over your card’s international policies – since San-X charges in yen, some credit card companies will add a charge for the conversion, and some will not (like travel rewards cards). San-X accepts a ton of credit cards, and that part is pretty standard. Also, I’ve found that my Google Chrome translator kind of goes wild while the order is being processed, but this doesn’t affect your order.

Once everything is set, confirmed, and paid for at the San-X Net Shop side of things, they’ll send you a few emails (your order confirmation from an @emix.jp address, and your payment confirmation from an @aeon.co.jp address).

Then your order will ship to the Tenso warehouse! This took about 3 days for me, but that was over a weekend so the local shipping time might be even shorter depending on what day of the week you order.

4. Ship from Tenso!

Tenso will send you an email when you package has arrived at their warehouse. From there, pay the international shipping fee at their website, and your package will be on its way to your home! They even send you the original San-X box with a Rilakkuma design!

The usage fee is 490 yen (~5.42 USD), plus the EMS shipping fee based on weight and destination – all of which can be calculated at the Tenso site. For my last order, I paid a 2220 yen (~24.54 USD) EMS shipping fee for 5 plushies (820 g): this included tracking, and my package arrived just 4 days after my payment was confirmed, and I live basically across the globe! Totally worth it for the speed and security, in my opinion.

Whew that was a long trip! Hope that helped, and happy Rilakkuma shopping!

(For the record, I’m completely unaffiliated with San-X/emix/Tenso, and this is just a record of my process and experience – sorry this kinda reads like an ad; I just had a pretty positive experience and wanted to share!)

WOW,thanks so much rilakkumalifestyle!! I really hope they will stock the floats and other limited edition items. I will use your guide but may bother you if I get confused. Thanks again for the taking the time to do so and I hope that other fans will benefit from your kindness and hardwork!!

No problem! The only things I would pay attention to are:
1. Charges: Tenso is very upfront and won’t throw hidden charges at you, but just be aware. I detailed all of it in the above post. I still think it comes out way cheaper than most Rilakkuma pre-order businesses.
2. Shipping: it’s EMS! Pricey, but fast and with tracking.
3. Country: Tenso doesn’t deliver to every country – make sure to check first!

Thank you so much for this thorough explanation. I knew it wasn’t drastically complicated, but I was a bit hesitant to try it previously because I was afraid I would do something wrong. I signed up for Tenso back in the summer, and maybe soon I’ll be able to get some things. I can’t thank you enough for this.

OH MY GOSH, the floats are sold out at the San X online shop already?? How can this be?? I was waiting and looking forward to getting them…. I don’t want to get it at that other site because they charge way too much… I knew that they are popular and hard to get but how did people get them so fast???

Yeah, unfortunately hot items like limited editions sell out really fast – they stock just as much or maybe only slightly more than a regular Rilakkuma store, which isn’t a lot. They might end up doing a “soft release” later – I think some people return theirs or something… so check back every once in a while or sign up for their email alerts. I’ll let you know if I see them in stock, too!

I know those items are really hot, but I did not think it would sell out that fast. Boy, it was so much faster than I thought. What is a “soft release”?? Sorry, I have never heard of that term before. Thanks and I will keep on checking back and have signed up for their email alerts, but I sort of doubt that they will get them back in stock because they are so popular and limited. Thanks for your help! However, if in the end I really can’t it get it there or somewhere for a decent price, I may have to get it from that one site even though it is really expensive. But that is only if I get desperate and will be a last resort for me. I know that I will regret it if I miss these floats since they are so cute,rare and beautiful.

Well haha “soft release” is not a very technical term, but it basically means that the Net Shop will put a few more in stock without a big announcement. You’ll probably get an email about it i(if it happens) if you signed up or the alerts. I think this happens because some people end up returning theirs? I’m not sure sure why, but I’ve seen it happen.

I’m not sure if this will happen with the Wonderland floats though, I just recall the Christmas 2012 playset (which sold out its pre-orders in 2012) having a soft release early this year, and the Forest Playset (2010) was soft released again as well.

Thanks and I did not realize how hard these floats were to get. The preorder is full at the other site even though it is really expensive. I saw the Christmas ones for this year and don’t really like them. I was looking forward to a nice Christmas set too. Oh well… I can just save money then… I guess in the end if I really can’t get the floats then I will give up since we can’t have it all… Thanks a lot for your help and all… I really appreciate it.

I finally just ordered a set after I requested from Michelle of Mira plush. She is really nice and honest. I am glad to see an honest seller like her even though the set is expensive but it is even more expensive now. However, she did not try to rip me off since she is a San X fan too. WOW, I did not know these parade floats were so hard to get but I am lucky to finally get one.

The 110cm Rilakkuma plush is out of stock throughout the whole of my country, and I am thinking of purchasing it directly from San-X instead of waiting for the retail shops to re-stock. Do you know whether, and how, I could check the delivery cost first before making the purchase?

– From San-X to Tenso, it’s always gonna be 500 yen no matter what (San-X charges this).
– Scroll down to the bottom of this page: http://www.tenso.com/en/guide/shop/sanxshop.html to calculate the delivery cost from Tenso to your country. As for the weight to put in… 110cm wow that is a pretty giant Rilakkuma (over a meter tall?) so that would be pretty expensive just because they calculate EMS delivery by weight (not Tenso’s rules). The Zodiac Rilakkumas I got were 22cm each were about 450 g each, as a reference.

The shipping from the San-X Net Shop to Tenso took 3 days, and after I sent my payment to Tenso, there way about 1 day of processing, and then the shipping from Tenso to my house took 4 days (I live in the US).

i have a question so no matter how much i order the base shipping charge from san-x to tenso is 500 yen?
If yes, then from tenso to my country which is asia. The usage fee all depends on my overall items weight right?

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with ordering from the Net Shop is that they don’t always carry the limited edition items (they often have the store exclusives though). I always try to check the Net Shop first if I can, but they don’t stock everything.

Loft is an independent chain, so the Loft exclusives are only found at Loft stores. For those special edition plushies, I usually use Yahoo Japan Auctions.

I’ve ordered from the auctions quite often, and have never had a bad experience with any seller. I think it’s most important to make sure that you look at the photos closely to make sure it’s what you want.

Since I don’t have a Japanese bank account, I use Buyee, and they make buying on Yahoo Japan as an international buyer really easy!

sorry to keep spamming you question. First time purchasing from japan x.x how do i get the buyee? do u mind teaching? heh if you dont mind can use email~ g.miksze@gmail.com. i have problem clicking the reply at bottom LOL! ;x

Hey, so sorry to hear that it didn’t work for you :/ I do remember that the website told me my order didn’t go through even after Aeon sent me an email that it did though. Also, the last time I ordered from the Net Shop was about 2 months ago with a Visa, but things on their website change quite often since I wrote this guide 3 years ago – I’ll definitely have to update it the next time I make an order!

I actually don’t recall having to put any address other than my tenso one in. Feel free to send me screenshots of the trouble you’re having at rilakkumalifestyle@gmail.com, and I’ll try to help you as much as I can.

This is really helpful, thanks for explaining everything step by step. If every business had great communication policies written out and easy-to-understand pictures.. man would it be so much easier for me to hand over my cash LOL! Thanks for making such a thoughtful post, I honestly wish there were more blogs and international guides like this!

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